If you’re rushing in from 3.x, and your Blacksmith gear is subpar, don’t worry! While your Blacksmith leveling journey will be harder, I’ve got you covered. Read the clickies, they WILL help you!

Your gear is bad, and you feel bad. Playing catch up

Unlike gathering, its very VERY hard to “cheat” your way back into the game. The first few levels will be a little bit more difficult, but I’ve laid out a cost-efficient path for you! You’ll be EQUALS with even the most hardened crafters quickly enough!

If you’re using anything LESS than the Chimerical Felt / Hallowed Chestnut tier, you fall into the “some struggles ahead” pile.

What do I do to reach 61? 62?

Before we get into the specifics of Blacksmith, keep these little things in mind:

Grinding: is actually legit. You’re going to be using the materials anyway! Use the sparse HQ’s you get to craft levequest items if needed.

Commercial Engineering Manual: There’s no better time to use this than now when you’re a scrub. Grinding is legit at this point.

Levequests: You can buy them off the Market Board! You can craft them yourself, and if they’re NQ submit them anyway! Just do whatever you can that’s within your budget. It’s better than letting your leves pile up to 100, and any method to get out of “hell” is better than nothing. Buy up cheap NQ’s even!

Grand Company Submissions: They’re a “free” levequest, but they sometimes have things which are very expensive to craft. If you have a “star” entry, DO THAT AT ALL COSTS! The exp is huge. AT LEVEL 60 (to maybe 62) the chance of getting an endgame Heavensward submission is pretty significant. These are difficult to craft, and are sparsely stocked on the Market Board. It’s tough going, but a viable option…

Food: If you must, eat food to reach important CP points, or cover up where you feel you’re lacking. The Culinarian NPC in Kugane (X12 Y12~) sells some food, some of it can be pricey so maximize it! It also gives a welcome 3% EXP boost.

When does BSM leveling get better!?

At 61, 62, and 63, you will progressively get some gear upgrades that will get you within 90% power of the previous tier BiS – and at which point this guide gets much easier since everything is “UNIFORM” so to speak.

I will be putting more clicky box reminders for these events.

Level up your crafters simultaneously!

To prevent confusion on what rotation you use, what gear goes where… it’s just better IMO. There are many little reasons to do this which I am sure you can imagine.

Leveling gatherers at the same time as crafters is also good. You save money gathering your own resources. And when you DO decide to grind out some certain material (example, Koppranickel Sand), you get the gatherer EXP when you need it most (grinding in between collectibles!)See ourDoH| DoLlevelingguides.

LEVEL YOUR RETAINER

For any serious crafter, leveling your Retainer to 60+ is a HUGE money saver. They can gather monster drop mats for you, which tend to be expensive early on.

How do I level my retainer past 60!?You need to give it a job crystal. Go to any Retainer Vocate to get the voucher.

Read the notes for the ENTIRE TIER before proceeding. The “important events per tier” is important for you to review.

Blacksmith Leveling 60 to 62

L60 Fixing up your cross-class skills

To make things simple, try to have the same cross-class skills for every class. For the sake of simplicity, we will try to use the SAME rotation for every class.

Disclaimer: I cannot promise this will work for you. Everyone is coming into Stormblood with different stat levels (you may be too weak or too strong). It’s very possible that your gear is SEVERELY lacking. In which case, it’s only natural you should expect more difficulty coming into Stormblood, right? But it’s a place to start.

If you’re missing CP, I highly suggest food buffs to cover your weaknesses in either CP or Craftsmanship.

No, it’s not the “perfect rotation” for you – only you can make that. It’s a good start template, and great for manual crafting as you can abuse the bejeesus out of good procs during the 2x Great Stride phase.

It’s all about progress: “How many steps it takes to synthesize progress” is the backbone of all rotations. Once you figure that out, you can reverse-engineer your own personal rotation.

THIS BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY LESS OF A HASSLE IF YOU LEVEL ALL CRAFTERS SIMULTANEOUSLY! So you’re not confused on what rotation to use at what level / gear specs. (See ourDoH| DoLlevelingguides).

The below are TEMPLATES THAT YOU SHOULD TRY TO
ADJUST TO YOUR NEEDS.

L60 40DUR 558 DIFF

THIS ROTATION IS “WEAK” – it’s suited for guys fresh off the Heaven’s Ward tier. THIS ROTATION IS MEANT TO BE EDITED to suit your needs. It’s a basic template, macro at your own risk. Stormblood recipes are L61 – Being a level under the recipe has huge drawbacks.

Now, here’s the thing. There is almost ZERO reason to try an 80 durability recipe while LEVEL 60 – I recommend trying them at L61. However, if you want to craft your catch up gear one level early (why..?).

For insanely obvious reasons, High Steel Nugget repeatable levequest “High Steal” is the best for leveling Blacksmith in this tier. The only downside is it’s a 40 durability craft which can be tough for lower geared players.

Hell, buy ’em if you have to.

If you wanna do 80 Durability Crafts, the High Steel Head Knife is leagues above it’s competitor 80. You can sell a few of ’em too as these L62 weapons are marketable.

BSM 60 to 62: What I did in this tier

Here’s what I personally did in this tier

I started off by making a PILE, and I mean a PILE of High Steel Nuggets. HOWEVER, DOING THIS ON ARMORER IS SUPERIOR. WHY?

Since you have such a great BSM L60 Levequest, you can actually grind like a beast on Armorer, then SUBMIT them using BSM.

Either way, this tier is all about High Steel Nuggets – grind on them, and submit them until you hit 61 and 62 respectively.

Grinding Blacksmith 60 to 62

I’d like to state it now that grinding on 40 durability ingots is a huge part of crafting leveling (you’re gonna end up using the materials, anyway…) so always try to optimize your rotation for those.

High Steel Nugget grinding is your only choice right now. Commercial Engineering Manual is your friend.

Important notes and events in this tier

Gear Upgrades: 61 Left side (Bloodhempen & Gaganaskin Tier)

Here’s a list of the new gear you’ll be getting soon. In this table, 5 of the left-side pieces are L61. Start with the Shirt when you’re getting them – its gives the largest stats!

LEAVE OPEN MELDS AND EASY FORCE MELDS to cover up for any “Hey, I’m missing a tiny bit of craftsmanship!” scenarios. Melding? Feel free to upgrade the materia you will use. Of all the left-side pieces, the CHEST is the only one you will be changing down the line (65+). The rest are optional upgrades.

Keep note that NQ High Steel Sledgehammers and Files are QUEST REWARDS so if you’re desperate you can do that.

I wouldn’t bother with High Steel Kris at all. It is a quest reward (HQ!) too, so check the MB for a possible cheapo.

BSM 62 to 64:What I did in this tier

Here’s what I personally did in this tier:

I crafted every single L62 tool in existence. I started with BSM (to improve my chances – check the rotation update down there).

I wouldn’t bother with the L62 BSM leves UNLESS you can pick ’em up off the MB cheap. I picked up a few High Steel File NQ for like less than 3k each, and submitted those a couple times. Obviously, this may be unsustainable.

To round yourself out to 64 – simply submit more of the “High Steal” L60 BSM levequest (High Steel Nugget). You get no penalty, don’t worry.

Grinding Blacksmith 62 to 64

High Steel Ingot: Don’t need to make too many, but you’ll be using a fair bit of this in the current tier or so.

High Steel Nugget: I told you to make a ton of these…

ANY AND ALL FORMS OF L62 High Steel tier TOOLS. (profit)

Important notes and events in this tier

BSM L62 Main hand and Belt

As I mentioned earlier, you can get the main hand weapon now, and you’re nearly up to snuff!

Making / Buying the HQ Offhand? I did not find this “necessary” UNTIL LEVEL 65. Looking back, if that was the case, then you might as well pick it up ASAP. It’s an “optional” upgrade for sure, but meaningful.

BSM L63 HQ Off-hand: High Steel File IS MANDATORY! Please upgrade your off-hand as often as you can. The stats are huge.

I sincerely hope you have followed the gear upgrades up to this point. Your “end goal” is to get 409 CP. Make it happen.

From here on, I will assume YOUR GEAR IS UP TO DATE.

Gear Check: Just a reminder

If everyone followed the guide, their gear will now be caught up. Here’s what you should be packing…

20 thoughts on “FFXIV Blacksmith Leveling Guide (Stormblood Updated)”

The 68 leves aren’t correct. Knock on wood, for the molybdenum ball-pien hammer, is NOT a triple Leve quest. it’s only a single. if there is a triple here I believe it would most likely be the Fire for hire, the molybdenum rimfire. I did find the knock on wood to be faster and better since I leveled the gatherers, but it does spend more leves

If anybody is having trouble with the L62 80DUR 379CP rotation because they lack the required CP, changing the second Steady Hand II to a Steady Hand saves 3 CP (in fact everyone should do that, because you hit 100% either way) and omitting it altogether saves 25 CP and only changes the Basic Touch and Byregot’s Blessing to 90%, which is still totally reliable. Doing this changes the CP requirement for the rotation to 354 from 379, which is a huge jump for low-geared crafters. Also, once you hit L63, Rapid Synthesis III with Steady Hand II should replace Careful Synthesis III in most cases (IMO). Especially if you cross-class Tricks of the Trade for the extra 20 CP ticks every once in a while, considering, once Comfort Zone falls off, there’s no reason to want to use unnecessary steps.

Nice guide but there is an error with your Lv60 40 DUR macros. As is it leaves you at -15/40 DUR which means you can only do two careful synthesis at the end and have to complete any further is impossible
HT -35/40
HT – 30/40
HT- 25/40 W?N wears here
HT – 15/40
HT – 5/40
MM – 35/40
BT – 25/40
Byregots – 15/40
CSII – 5/40
CSII – -5/40
CSII – -15/40

Ah, I forgot to put a note on this one… This one is meant to be “changed” depending if you are able to snag the progress in 2xCSII, I forgot to put that caveat. I guess the safer call is to edit the rotation to accommodate 3xCSIII instead (better for weaker crafters). The final BT (or the 5th HT) is what’s causing the error, and should be omitted for crafters that need the CSIII – I forgot to mention it!

Wanted to point out for BSM 56+: Titanium Nugget is a potential collectible item with a starting collectability of 2500 to start. it gives 103680 exp and 10 blue scrip (starting) making it hands down the best way to level from that point on as nothing can compare to its value, or at least, nothing that I can see (since you always need nuggets for something).

I’m confused. You say that using levequests at 0-15 isn’t recommended, but then you go on to tell how to use them without really addressing what to do instead. Nothing here that describes what recipes are the best “bang for the buck” so to speak, in order to power level out over 15. Am I missing something here?

I doomed myself with that line didn’t I? haha. The shopping list method is the most LEVE EFFICIENT (since you don’t use any). Courier Reverse Courier might be FASTEST and most BRAINLESS (but uses a bit of leves). This honestly depends on how rich you are with leves. I will be fixing all of the DOH leveling guides up to the new standard – it just so happens BSM is one of the “not yet fixed” ones. (CHeck out weaver).

Have you checked in Red Rooster Stead? The Levequest “The Unkindest Cut” (NOT FROM LIMSA) involves submitting Bronze Saw for roughly 860 EXP and 94 gil as the reward. Kindly double check if it exists or not, because I see it.

Ever thought of making a master list?
What I am saying is if someone wanted to level -everything- in one go. Much of crafting uses parts made from other jobs… so if you wanted to lv it all in one shot you could say go out, gather x amount of this this and this, craft x of this from this job, use it to craft this from this job. This job and this job make the same things, craft x from this job and y from this job (I.E. smithing and armoror can both make bars/rivits of the same kind) next lvs go gather x of this this and this etc etc etc.

It just be something I’d love to see. I maxed my gathering out first and stockpiled a buncha stuff but having a proper means to lv everything else together be nice instead of having to pause and check the market, or scan though my craft log to see what makes this item I need, or if I even know it yet, or going out and gathering even more. Just sit back and have everything and go.